Asus wants to become Android tablet top dog by the end of the year

After picking up a report from Digitimes claiming that tablet shipments will increase significantly in Q2 2012 and that Asus is set to claw its way to top-3 by June, it now seems that the Taiwanese company has set its sights even higher.

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In a recent investors’ conference, Jerry Shen, Asustek Computer’s CEO, talked about the company’s main goals in 2012 and made a couple of very bold statements. According to Shen, Asus wants to become the world’s top Android tablet vendor by the end of the year and estimates that it will ship around 3 million such devices worldwide.

The Eee Pad Transformer, Transformer Prime, and Transformer Pad are the company’s most important tablet names right now, and, even though the trio has proven to be quite popular and successful, it’s hard to believe that Asus will ever manage to sell so many devices.

It’s safe to assume therefore that Asus is basing these claims on a jolly-joker of some sorts, the kind of ace up a company’s sleeve that can revolutionize the tablet market as we know it these days. That kind of ace could only be the Nexus Tablet, a device that hasn’t been officially confirmed by anyone just yet, but is thought to be manufactured by Asus in collaboration with Google and expected to hit the market sometime during summer.

We should also mention the fact that Jerry Shen predicts his company to ship 1.2 million Android-based tablets during Q2 2012, which would be double the amount of devices sold between January and March. Where would such a difference come from? The Nexus Tablet, of course, which can now be considered as almost confirmed for a launch before the end of June.

But what about Samsung? Will the current Android tablet top-dog and the manufacturer of “the only real rival to the iPad”, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, according to Apple claims, just accept defeat and leave its title in Asus’ hands? Hard to believe, yet we can’t say we’ve seen many new and exciting slates unveiled by Sammy lately. And the Galaxy Tab 10.1, while still popular, is almost a year old and will not linger in the spotlight for much longer.

What do you think? Can Asus become the number one threat for Apple’s still unchallenged tablet reign? Will Samsung be overshadowed by the Transformer Prime makers? Do you think that we’re getting near to the Nexus Tablet’s unveiling? Tell us your opinions in the comments section below!